Amazon Prime Membership Now Gets You Unlimited Web Photo Storage
Amazon has added yet another perk for Amazon Prime subscribers. Starting on Tuesday, the company will make Prime Photo available for all Prime subscribers, which means they can store an unlimited number of photos in Amazon’s cloud without additional charges. You can get started here.
Photos can be uploaded to Prime Photos through either iOS or Android apps, or through an Amazon Cloud Drive Web interface. The service works with Amazon’s Fire tablets and Fire Phone as well, naturally.
In fact, unlimited photo storage in Amazon Cloud Drive was one of the banner features on the Fire Phone when it launched, so it’s not surprising that Amazon would eventually make it available for non-Amazon devices, similar to what it does with the Kindle app and other Amazon services.
The mobile apps automatically upload photos from your phone’s photo roll into Prime Photos, which can be displayed on a variety of devices, including PlayStation 3 and 4 as well as Amazon Fire TV. One of the nicest features in Prime Photos is that the apps upload the original version of photos, so you’ll have a full-resolution backup in the cloud.
As smartphone cameras push the megapixel count higher and higher, photo files are getting larger as well. It’s easy to fill up a 16 GB or 32 GB device with photos — and many cloud photo services like Dropbox have strict storage limits before users end up having to pay.
Adding unlimited photo storage to Amazon Prime is yet another way to convince subscribers they can’t live without the $99-a-year service: Even for those who don’t care for free two-day shipping or Amazon’s video library, it will be hard to change the way they store gigabytes of their memories.
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